'A.J. Carruthers has been admirably busy — academic monograph, blog posts for Southerly, a new index of experimental poets on Jacket2, job in Shanghai, daily Tweets. And there is a lot in his project of promoting ‘the Australian avant-garde’ to be sympathetic towards, particularly as a project after his Stave Sightings. But can we make a distinction between his formulation of ‘the Australian avant-garde’ (or its variations such as ‘neo’ and ‘experimental’) and ‘the avant-garde in ‘Australia’’? And how might that matter for suburbanism?' (Introduction)